From Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) to Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), populist calls to “fix” our antitrust laws and the underlying Consumer Welfare Standard have found a foothold on Capitol Hill. At the same time, there are calls to “fix” the Supreme Court by packing it with new justices. The court’s unanimous decision in NCAA v. Alston demonstrates that neither needs repair. To the contrary, clearly anti-competitive conduct—like the NCAA’s compensation rules—is proscribed under the Consumer Welfare Standard, and every justice from Samuel Alito to Sonia Sotomayor can agree on that.
In 1984, the court in NCAA v. Board of Regents suggested that “courts should take care when assessing the NCAA’s restraints on student-athlete compensation.” After all, joint ventures like sports leagues are entitled to rule-of-reason treatment. But while times change, the Consumer Welfare Standard is sufficiently flexible to meet those changes.
Where a competitive restraint exists primarily to ensure that “enormous sums of money flow to seemingly everyone except the student athletes,” the court rightly calls it out for what it is. As Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in his concurrence:
Nowhere else in America can businesses get away with agreeing not to pay their workers a fair market rate on the theory that their product is defined by not paying their workers a fair market rate. And under ordinary principles of antitrust law, it is not evident why college sports should be any different. The NCAA is not above the law.
Disturbing these “ordinary principles”—whether through legislation, administrative rulemaking, or the common law—is simply unnecessary. For example, the Open Markets Institute filed an amicus brief arguing that the rule of reason should be “bounded” and willfully blind to the pro-competitive benefits some joint ventures can create (an argument that has been used, unsuccessfully, to attack ridesharing services like Uber and Lyft). Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) has proposed shifting the burden of proof so that merging parties are guilty until proven innocent. Sen. Warren would go further, deeming Amazon’s acquisition of Whole Foods anti-competitive simply because the company is “big,” and ignoring the merger’s myriad pro-competitive benefits. Sen. Hawley has gone further still: calling on Amazon to be investigated criminally for the crime of being innovative and successful.
Several of the current proposals, including those from Sens. Klobuchar and Hawley (and those recently introduced in the House that essentially single out firms for disfavored treatment), would replace the Consumer Welfare Standard that has underpinned antitrust law for decades with a policy that effectively punishes firms for being politically unpopular.
These examples demonstrate we should be wary when those in power assert that things are so irreparably broken that they need a complete overhaul. The “solutions” peddled usually increase politicians’ power by enabling them to pick winners and losers through top-down approaches that stifle the bottom-up innovations that make consumers’ lives better.
Are antitrust law and the Supreme Court perfect? Hardly. But in a 9-0 decision, the court proved this week that there’s nothing broken about either.
In its June 21 opinion in NCAA v. Alston, a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and thereby upheld a district court injunction finding unlawful certain National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) rules limiting the education-related benefits schools may make available to student athletes. The decision will come as no surprise to antitrust lawyers who heard the oral argument; the NCAA was portrayed as a monopsony cartel whose rules undermined competition by restricting compensation paid to athletes.
Alas, however, Alston demonstrates that seemingly “good facts” (including an apparently Scrooge-like defendant) can make very bad law. While superficially appearing to be a relatively straightforward application of Sherman Act rule of reason principles, the decision fails to come to grips with the relationship of the restraints before it to the successful provision of the NCAA’s joint venture product – amateur intercollegiate sports. What’s worse, Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s concurring opinion further muddies the court’s murky jurisprudential waters by signaling his view that the NCAA’s remaining compensation rules are anticompetitive and could be struck down in an appropriate case (“it is not clear how the NCAA can defend its remaining compensation rules”). Prospective plaintiffs may be expected to take the hint.
In sum, the claim that antitrust may properly be applied to combat the alleged “exploitation” of college athletes by NCAA compensation regulations does not stand up to scrutiny. The NCAA’s rules that define the scope of amateurism may be imperfect, but there is no reason to think that empowering federal judges to second guess and reformulate NCAA athletic compensation rules would yield a more socially beneficial (let alone optimal) outcome. (Believing that the federal judiciary can optimally reengineer core NCAA amateurism rules is a prime example of the Nirvana fallacy at work.) Furthermore, a Supreme Court decision affirming the 9th Circuit could do broad mischief by undermining case law that has accorded joint venturers substantial latitude to design the core features of their collective enterprise without judicial second-guessing.
Unfortunately, my concerns about a Supreme Court affirmance of the 9th Circuit were realized. Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch’s opinion for the court in Alston manifests a blinkered approach to the NCAA “monopsony” joint venture. To be sure, it cites and briefly discusses key Supreme Court joint venture holdings, including 2006’s Texaco v. Dagher. Nonetheless, it gives short shrift to the efficiency-based considerations that counsel presumptive deference to joint venture design rules that are key to the nature of a joint venture’s product.
As a legal matter, the court felt obliged to defer to key district court findings not contested by the NCAA—including that the NCAA enjoys “monopsony power” in the student athlete labor market, and that the NCAA’s restrictions in fact decrease student athlete compensation “below the competitive level.”
However, even conceding these points, the court could have, but did not, take note of and assess the role of the restrictions under review in helping engender the enormous consumer benefits the NCAA confers upon consumers of its collegiate sports product. There is good reason to view those restrictions as an effort by the NCAA to address a negative externality that could diminish the attractiveness of the NCAA’s product for ultimate consumers, a result that would in turn reduce inter-brand competition.
[T]he NCAA’s consistent and growing popularity reflects a product—”amateur sports” played by students and identified with the academic tradition—that continues to generate enormous consumer interest. Moreover, it appears without dispute that the NCAA, while in control of the design of its own athletic products, has preserved their integrity as amateur sports, notwithstanding the commercial success of some of them, particularly Division I basketball and Football Subdivision football. . . . Over many years, the NCAA has continually adjusted its eligibility and participation rules to prevent colleges from pursuing their own interests—which certainly can involve “pay to play”—in ways that would conflict with the procompetitive aims of the collaboration. In this sense, the NCAA’s amateurism rules are a classic example of addressing negative externalities and free riding that often are inherent or arise in the collaboration context.
The use of contractual restrictions (vertical restraints) to counteract free riding and other negative externalities generated in manufacturer-distributor interactions are well-recognized by antitrust courts. Although the restraints at issue in NCAA (and many other joint venture situations) are horizontal in nature, not vertical, they may be just as important as other nonstandard contracts in aligning the incentives of member institutions to best satisfy ultimate consumers. Satisfying consumers, in turn, enhances inter-brand competition between the NCAA’s product and other rival forms of entertainment, including professional sports offerings.
Alan Meese made a similar point in a recent paper (discussing a possible analytical framework for the court’s then-imminent Alston analysis):
[U]nchecked bidding for the services of student athletes could result in a market failure and suboptimal product quality, proof that the restraint reduces student athlete compensation below what an unbridled market would produce should not itself establish a prima facie case. Such evidence would instead be equally consistent with a conclusion that the restraint eliminates this market failure and restores compensation to optimal levels.
The court’s failure to address the externality justification was compounded by its handling of the rule of reason. First, in rejecting a truncated rule of reason with an initial presumption that the NCAA’s restraints involving student compensation are procompetitive, the court accepted that the NCAA’s monopsony power showed that its restraints “can (and in fact do) harm competition.” This assertion ignored the efficiency justification discussed above. As the Antitrust Economists’ Brief emphasized:
[A]cting more like regulators, the lower courts treated the NCAA’s basic product design as inherently anticompetitive [so did the Supreme Court], pushing forward with a full rule of reason that sent the parties into a morass of inquiries that were not (and were never intended to be) structured to scrutinize basic product design decisions and their hypothetical alternatives. Because that inquiry was unrestrained and untethered to any input or output restraint, the application of the rule of reason in this case necessarily devolved into a quasi-regulatory inquiry, which antitrust law eschews.
Having decided that a “full” rule of reason analysis is appropriate, the Supreme Court, in effect, imposed a “least restrictive means” test on the restrictions under review, while purporting not to do so. (“We agree with the NCAA’s premise that antitrust law does not require businesses to use anything like the least restrictive means of achieving legitimate business purposes.”) The court concluded that “it was only after finding the NCAA’s restraints ‘patently and inexplicably stricter than is necessary’ to achieve the procompetitive benefits the league had demonstrated that the district court proceeded to declare a violation of the Sherman Act.” Effectively, however, this statement deferred to the lower court’s second-guessing of the means employed by the NCAA to preserve consumer demand, which the lower court did without any empirical basis.
The Supreme Court also approved the district court’s rejection of the NCAA’s view of what amateurism requires. It stressed the district court’s findings that “the NCAA’s rules and restrictions on compensation have shifted markedly over time” (seemingly a reasonable reaction to changes in market conditions) and that the NCAA developed the restrictions at issue without any reference to “considerations of consumer demand” (a de facto regulatory mandate directed at the NCAA). The Supreme Court inexplicably dubbed these lower court actions “a straightforward application of the rule of reason.” These actions seem more like blind deference to rather arbitrary judicial second-guessing of the expert party with the greatest interest in satisfying consumer demand.
The Supreme Court ended its misbegotten commentary on “less restrictive alternatives” by first claiming that it agreed that “antitrust courts must give wide berth to business judgments before finding liability.” The court asserted that the district court honored this and other principles of judicial humility because it enjoined restraints on education-related benefits “only after finding that relaxing these restrictions would not blur the distinction between college and professional sports and thus impair demand – and only finding that this course represented a significantly (not marginally) less restrictive means of achieving the same procompetitive benefits as the NCAA’s current rules.” This lower court finding once again was not based on an empirical analysis of procompetitive benefits under different sets of rules. It was little more than the personal opinion of a judge, who lacked the NCAA’s knowledge of relevant markets and expertise. That the Supreme Court accepted it as an exercise in restrained judicial analysis is well nigh inexplicable.
The Antitrust Economists’ Brief, unlike the Supreme Court, enunciated the correct approach to judicial rewriting of core NCAA joint venture rules:
The institutions that are members of the NCAA want to offer a particular type of athletic product—an amateur athletic product that they believe is consonant with their primary academic missions. By doing so, as th[e] [Supreme] Court has [previously] recognized [in its 1984 NCAA v. Board of Regents decision], they create a differentiated offering that widens consumer choice and enhances opportunities for student-athletes. NCAA, 468 U.S. at 102. These same institutions have drawn lines that they believe balance their desire to foster intercollegiate athletic competition with their overarching academic missions. Both the district court and the Ninth Circuit have now said that they may not do so, unless they draw those lines differently. Yet neither the district court nor the Ninth Circuit determined that the lines drawn reduce the output of intercollegiate athletics or ascertained whether their judicially-created lines would expand that output. That is not the function of antitrust courts, but of legislatures.
Other Harms the Court Failed to Consider
Finally, the court failed to consider other harms that stem from a presumptive suspicion of NCAA restrictions on athletic compensation in general. The elimination of compensation rules should favor large well-funded athletic programs over others, potentially undermining “competitive balance” among schools. (Think of an NCAA March Madness tournament where “Cinderella stories” are eliminated, as virtually all the talented players have been snapped up by big name schools.) It could also, through the reallocation of income to “big name big sports” athletes who command a bidding premium, potentially reduce funding support for “minor college sports” that provide opportunities to a wide variety of student-athletes. This would disadvantage those athletes, undermine the future of “minor” sports, and quite possibly contribute to consumer disillusionment and unhappiness (think of the millions of parents of “minor sports” athletes).
What’s more, the existing rules allow many promising but non-superstar athletes to develop their skills over time, enhancing their ability to eventually compete at the professional level. (This may even be the case for some superstars, who may obtain greater long-term financial rewards by refining their talents and showcasing their skills for a year or two in college.) In addition, the current rules climate allows many student athletes who do not turn professional to develop personal connections that serve them well in their professional and personal lives, including connections derived from the “brand” of their university. (Think of wealthy and well-connected alumni who are ardent fans of their colleges’ athletic programs.) In a world without NCAA amateurism rules, the value of these experiences and connections could wither, to the detriment of athletes and consumers alike. (Consistent with my conclusion, economists Richard McKenzie and Dwight Lee have argued against the proposition that “college athletes are materially ‘underpaid’ and are ‘exploited’”.)
This “parade of horribles” might appear unlikely in the short term. Nevertheless, in the course of time, the inability of the NCAA to control the attributes of its product, due to a changed legal climate, make it all too real. This is especially the case in light of Justice Kavanaugh’s strong warning that other NCAA compensation restrictions are likely indefensible. (As he bluntly put it, venerable college sports “traditions alone cannot justify the NCAA’s decision to build a massive money-raising enterprise on the backs of student athletes who are not fairly compensated. . . . The NCAA is not above the law.”)
Conclusion
The Supreme Court’s misguided Alston decision fails to weigh the powerful efficiency justifications for the NCAA’s amateurism rules. This holding virtually invites other lower courts to ignore efficiencies and to second guess decisions that go to the heart of the NCAA’s joint venture product offering. The end result is likely to reduce consumer welfare and, quite possibly, the welfare of many student athletes as well. One would hope that Congress, if it chooses to address NCAA rules, will keep these dangers well in mind. A statutory change not directed solely at the NCAA, creating a rebuttable presumption of legality for restraints that go to the heart of a lawful joint venture, may merit serious consideration.
The European Commission this week published its proposed Artificial Intelligence Regulation, setting out new rules for “artificial intelligence systems” used within the European Union. The regulation—the commission’s attempt to limit pernicious uses of AI without discouraging its adoption in beneficial cases—casts a wide net in defining AI to include essentially any software developed using machine learning. As a result, a host of software may fall under the regulation’s purview.
The regulation categorizes AIs by the kind and extent of risk they may pose to health, safety, and fundamental rights, with the overarching goal to:
Prohibit “unacceptable risk” AIs outright;
Place strict restrictions on “high-risk” AIs;
Place minor restrictions on “limited-risk” AIs;
Create voluntary “codes of conduct” for “minimal-risk” AIs;
Establish a regulatory sandbox regime for AI systems;
Set up a European Artificial Intelligence Board to oversee regulatory implementation; and
Set fines for noncompliance at up to 30 million euros, or 6% of worldwide turnover, whichever is greater.
AIs That Are Prohibited Outright
The regulation prohibits AI that are used to exploit people’s vulnerabilities or that use subliminal techniques to distort behavior in a way likely to cause physical or psychological harm. Also prohibited are AIs used by public authorities to give people a trustworthiness score, if that score would then be used to treat a person unfavorably in a separate context or in a way that is disproportionate. The regulation also bans the use of “real-time” remote biometric identification (such as facial-recognition technology) in public spaces by law enforcement, with exceptions for specific and limited uses, such as searching for a missing child.
The first prohibition raises some interesting questions. The regulation says that an “exploited vulnerability” must relate to age or disability. In its announcement, the commission says this is targeted toward AIs such as toys that might induce a child to engage in dangerous behavior.
The ban on AIs using “subliminal techniques” is more opaque. The regulation doesn’t give a clear definition of what constitutes a “subliminal technique,” other than that it must be something “beyond a person’s consciousness.” Would this include TikTok’s algorithm, which imperceptibly adjusts the videos shown to the user to keep them engaged on the platform? The notion that this might cause harm is not fanciful, but it’s unclear whether the provision would be interpreted to be that expansive, whatever the commission’s intent might be. There is at least a risk that this provision would discourage innovative new uses of AI, causing businesses to err on the side of caution to avoid the huge penalties that breaking the rules would incur.
The prohibition on AIs used for social scoring is limited to public authorities. That leaves space for socially useful expansions of scoring systems, such as consumers using their Uber rating to show a record of previous good behavior to a potential Airbnb host. The ban is clearly oriented toward more expansive and dystopian uses of social credit systems, which some fear may be used to arbitrarily lock people out of society.
The ban on remote biometric identification AI is similarly limited to its use by law enforcement in public spaces. The limited exceptions (preventing an imminent terrorist attack, searching for a missing child, etc.) would be subject to judicial authorization except in cases of emergency, where ex-post authorization can be sought. The prohibition leaves room for private enterprises to innovate, but all non-prohibited uses of remote biometric identification would be subject to the requirements for high-risk AIs.
Restrictions on ‘High-Risk’ AIs
Some AI uses are not prohibited outright, but instead categorized as “high-risk” and subject to strict rules before they can be used or put to market. AI systems considered to be high-risk include those used for:
Safety components for certain types of products;
Remote biometric identification, except those uses that are banned outright;
Safety components in the management and operation of critical infrastructure, such as gas and electricity networks;
Dispatching emergency services;
Educational admissions and assessments;
Employment, workers management, and access to self-employment;
Evaluating credit-worthiness;
Assessing eligibility to receive social security benefits or services;
A range of law-enforcement purposes (e.g., detecting deepfakes or predicting the occurrence of criminal offenses);
Migration, asylum, and border-control management; and
Administration of justice.
While the commission considers these AIs to be those most likely to cause individual or social harm, it may not have appropriately balanced those perceived harms with the onerous regulatory burdens placed upon their use.
As Mikołaj Barczentewicz at the Surrey Law and Technology Hub has pointed out, the regulation would discourage even simple uses of logic or machine-learning systems in such settings as education or workplaces. This would mean that any workplace that develops machine-learning tools to enhance productivity—through, for example, monitoring or task allocation—would be subject to stringent requirements. These include requirements to have risk-management systems in place, to use only “high quality” datasets, and to allow human oversight of the AI, as well as other requirements around transparency and documentation.
The obligations would apply to any companies or government agencies that develop an AI (or for whom an AI is developed) with a view toward marketing it or putting it into service under their own name. The obligations could even attach to distributors, importers, users, or other third parties if they make a “substantial modification” to the high-risk AI, market it under their own name, or change its intended purpose—all of which could potentially discourage adaptive use.
Without going into unnecessary detail regarding each requirement, some are likely to have competition- and innovation-distorting effects that are worth discussing.
The rule that data used to train, validate, or test a high-risk AI has to be high quality (“relevant, representative, and free of errors”) assumes that perfect, error-free data sets exist, or can easily be detected. Not only is this not necessarily the case, but the requirement could impose an impossible standard on some activities. Given this high bar, high-risk AIs that use data of merely “good” quality could be precluded. It also would cut against the frontiers of research in artificial intelligence, where sometimes only small and lower-quality datasets are available to train AI. A predictable effect is that the rule would benefit large companies that are more likely to have access to large, high-quality datasets, while rules like the GDPR make it difficult for smaller companies to acquire that data.
High-risk AIs also must submit technical and user documentation that detail voluminous information about the AI system, including descriptions of the AI’s elements, its development, monitoring, functioning, and control. These must demonstrate the AI complies with all the requirements for high-risk AIs, in addition to documenting its characteristics, capabilities, and limitations. The requirement to produce vast amounts of information represents another potentially significant compliance cost that will be particularly felt by startups and other small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). This could further discourage AI adoption within the EU, as European enterprises already consider liability for potential damages and regulatory obstacles as impediments to AI adoption.
The requirement that the AI be subject to human oversight entails that the AI can be overseen and understood by a human being and that the AI can never override a human user. While it may be important that an AI used in, say, the criminal justice system must be understood by humans, this requirement could inhibit sophisticated uses beyond the reasoning of a human brain, such as how to safely operate a national electricity grid. Providers of high-risk AI systems also must establish a post-market monitoring system to evaluate continuous compliance with the regulation, representing another potentially significant ongoing cost for the use of high-risk AIs.
The regulation also places certain restrictions on “limited-risk” AIs, notably deepfakes and chatbots. Such AIs must be labeled to make a user aware they are looking at or listening to manipulated images, video, or audio. AIs must also be labeled to ensure humans are aware when they are speaking to an artificial intelligence, where this is not already obvious.
Taken together, these regulatory burdens may be greater than the benefits they generate, and could chill innovation and competition. The impact on smaller EU firms, which already are likely to struggle to compete with the American and Chinese tech giants, could prompt them to move outside the European jurisdiction altogether.
Regulatory Support for Innovation and Competition
To reduce the costs of these rules, the regulation also includes a new regulatory “sandbox” scheme. The sandboxes would putatively offer environments to develop and test AIs under the supervision of competent authorities, although exposure to liability would remain for harms caused to third parties and AIs would still have to comply with the requirements of the regulation.
SMEs and startups would have priority access to the regulatory sandboxes, although they must meet the same eligibility conditions as larger competitors. There would also be awareness-raising activities to help SMEs and startups to understand the rules; a “support channel” for SMEs within the national regulator; and adjusted fees for SMEs and startups to establish that their AIs conform with requirements.
These measures are intended to prevent the sort of chilling effect that was seen as a result of the GDPR, which led to a 17% increase in market concentration after it was introduced. But it’s unclear that they would accomplish this goal. (Notably, the GDPR contained similar provisions offering awareness-raising activities and derogations from specific duties for SMEs.) Firms operating in the “sandboxes” would still be exposed to liability, and the only significant difference to market conditions appears to be the “supervision” of competent authorities. It remains to be seen how this arrangement would sufficiently promote innovation as to overcome the burdens placed on AI by the significant new regulatory and compliance costs.
Governance and Enforcement
Each EU member state would be expected to appoint a “national competent authority” to implement and apply the regulation, as well as bodies to ensure high-risk systems conform with rules that require third party-assessments, such as remote biometric identification AIs.
The regulation establishes the European Artificial Intelligence Board to act as the union-wide regulatory body for AI. The board would be responsible for sharing best practices with member states, harmonizing practices among them, and issuing opinions on matters related to implementation.
As mentioned earlier, maximum penalties for marketing or using a prohibited AI (as well as for failing to use high-quality datasets) would be a steep 30 million euros or 6% of worldwide turnover, whichever is greater. Breaking other requirements for high-risk AIs carries maximum penalties of 20 million euros or 4% of worldwide turnover, while maximums of 10 million euros or 2% of worldwide turnover would be imposed for supplying incorrect, incomplete, or misleading information to the nationally appointed regulator.
Is the Commission Overplaying its Hand?
While the regulation only restricts AIs seen as creating risk to society, it defines that risk so broadly and vaguely that benign applications of AI may be included in its scope, intentionally or unintentionally. Moreover, the commission also proposes voluntary codes of conduct that would apply similar requirements to “minimal” risk AIs. These codes—optional for now—may signal the commission’s intent eventually to further broaden the regulation’s scope and application.
The commission clearly hopes it can rely on the “Brussels Effect” to steer the rest of the world toward tighter AI regulation, but it is also possible that other countries will seek to attract AI startups and investment by introducing less stringent regimes.
For the EU itself, more regulation must be balanced against the need to foster AI innovation. Without European tech giants of its own, the commission must be careful not to stifle the SMEs that form the backbone of the European market, particularly if global competitors are able to innovate more freely in the American or Chinese markets. If the commission has got the balance wrong, it may find that AI development simply goes elsewhere, with the EU fighting the battle for the future of AI with one hand tied behind its back.
The U.S. Supreme Court will hear a challenge next month to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’ 2020 decision in NCAA v. Alston. Alston affirmed a district court decision that enjoined the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) from enforcing rules that restrict the education-related benefits its member institutions may offer students who play Football Bowl Subdivision football and Division I basketball.
This will be the first Supreme Court review of NCAA practices since NCAA v. Board of Regents in 1984, which applied the antitrust rule of reason in striking down the NCAA’s “artificial limit” on the quantity of televised college football games, but also recognized that “this case involves an industry in which horizontal restraints on competition are essential if the product [intercollegiate athletic contests] is to be available at all.” Significantly, in commenting on the nature of appropriate, competition-enhancing NCAA restrictions, the court in Board of Regents stated that:
[I]n order to preserve the character and quality of the [NCAA] ‘product,’ athletes must not be paid, must be required to attend class, and the like. And the integrity of the ‘product’ cannot be preserved except by mutual agreement; if an institution adopted such restrictions unilaterally, its effectiveness as a competitor on the playing field might soon be destroyed. Thus, the NCAA plays a vital role in enabling college football to preserve its character, and as a result enables a product to be marketed which might otherwise be unavailable. In performing this role, its actions widen consumer choice – not only the choices available to sports fans but also those available to athletes – and hence can be viewed as procompetitive. [footnote citation omitted]
One’s view of the Alston case may be shaped by one’s priors regarding the true nature of the NCAA. Is the NCAA a benevolent Dr. Jekyll, which seeks to promote amateurism and fairness in college sports to the benefit of student athletes and the general public? Or is its benevolent façade a charade? Although perhaps a force for good in its early years, has the NCAA transformed itself into an evil Mr. Hyde, using restrictive rules to maintain welfare-inimical monopoly power as a seller cartel of athletic events and a monopsony employer cartel that suppresses athletes’ wages? I will return to this question—and its bearing on the appropriate resolution of this legal dispute—after addressing key contentions by both sides in Alston.
Summarizing the Arguments in NCAA v Alston
The Alston class-action case followed in the wake of the 9th Circuit’s decision in O’Bannon v. NCAA(2015). O’Bannon affirmed in large part a district court’s ruling that the NCAA illegally restrained trade, in violation of Section 1 of the Sherman Act, by preventing football and men’s basketball players from receiving compensation for the use of their names, images, and likenesses. It also affirmed the district court’s injunction insofar as it required the NCAA to implement the less restrictive alternative of permitting athletic scholarships for the full cost of attendance. (I commented approvingly on the 9th Circuit’s decision in a previous TOTM post.)
Subsequent antitrust actions by student-athletes were consolidated in the district court. After a bench trial, the district court entered judgment for the student-athletes, concluding in part that NCAA limits on education-related benefits were unreasonable restraints of trade. It enjoined those limits but declined to hold that other NCAA limits on compensation unrelated to education likewise violated Section 1.
In May 2020, a 9th Circuit panel held that the district court properly applied the three-step Sherman Act Section 1 rule of reason analysis in determining that the enjoined rules were unlawful restraints of trade.
First, the panel concluded that the student-athletes carried their burden at step one by showing that the restraints produced significant anticompetitive effects within the relevant market for student-athletes’ labor.
At step two, the NCAA was required to come forward with evidence of the restraints’ procompetitive effects. The panel endorsed the district court’s conclusion that only some of the challenged NCAA rules served the procompetitive purpose of preserving amateurism and thus improving consumer choice by maintaining a distinction between college and professional sports. Those rules were limits on above-cost-of-attendance payments unrelated to education, the cost-of-attendance cap on athletic scholarships, and certain restrictions on cash academic or graduation awards and incentives. The panel affirmed the district court’s conclusion that the remaining rules—restricting non-cash education-related benefits—did nothing to foster or preserve consumer demand. The panel held that the record amply supported the findings of the district court, which relied on demand analysis, survey evidence, and NCAA testimony.
The panel also affirmed the district court’s conclusion that, at step three, the student-athletes showed that any legitimate objectives could be achieved in a substantially less restrictive manner. The district court identified a less restrictive alternative of prohibiting the NCAA from capping certain education-related benefits and limiting academic or graduation awards or incentives below the maximum amount that an individual athlete may receive in athletic participation awards, while permitting individual conferences to set limits on education-related benefits. The panel held that the district court did not clearly err in determining that this alternative would be virtually as effective in serving the procompetitive purposes of the NCAA’s current rules and could be implemented without significantly increased cost.
Finally, the panel held that the district court’s injunction was not impermissibly vague and did not usurp the NCAA’s role as the superintendent of college sports. The panel also declined to broaden the injunction to include all NCAA compensation limits, including those on payments untethered to education. The panel concluded that the district court struck the right balance in crafting a remedy that both prevented anticompetitive harm to student-athletes while serving the procompetitive purpose of preserving the popularity of college sports.
The NCAA appealed to the Supreme Court, which granted the NCAA’s petition for certiorari Dec. 16, 2020. The NCAA contends that under Board of Regents, the NCAA rules regarding student-athlete compensation are reasonably related to preserving amateurism in college sports, are procompetitive, and should have been upheld after a short deferential review, rather than the full three-step rule of reason. According to the NCAA’s petition for certiorari, even under the detailed rule of reason, the 9th Circuit’s decision was defective. Specifically:
The Ninth Circuit … relieved plaintiffs of their burden to prove that the challenged rules unreasonably restrain trade, instead placing a “heavy burden” on the NCAA … to prove that each category of its rules is procompetitive and that an alternative compensation regime created by the district court could not preserve the procompetitive distinction between college and professional sports. That alternative regime—under which the NCAA must permit student-athletes to receive unlimited “education-related benefits,” including post-eligibility internships that pay unlimited amounts in cash and can be used for recruiting or retention—will vitiate the distinction between college and professional sports. And via the permanent injunction the Ninth Circuit upheld, the alternative regime will also effectively make a single judge in California the superintendent of a significant component of college sports. The Ninth Circuit’s approval of this judicial micromanagement of the NCAA denies the NCAA the latitude this Court has said it needs, and endorses unduly stringent scrutiny of agreements that define the central features of sports leagues’ and other joint ventures’ products. The decision thus twists the rule of reason into a tool to punish (and thereby deter) procompetitive activity.
Two amicus briefs support the NCAA’s position. One, filed on behalf of “antitrust law and business school professors,” stresses that the 9th Circuit’s decision misapplied the third step of the rule of reason by requiring defendants to show that their conduct was the least restrictive means available (instead of requiring plaintiff to prove the existence of an equally effective but less restrictive rule). More broadly:
[This approach] permits antitrust plaintiffs to commandeer the judiciary and use it to regulate and modify routine business conduct, so long as that conduct is not the least restrictive conduct imaginable by a plaintiff’s attorney or district judge. In turn, the risk that procompetitive ventures may be deemed unlawful and subject to treble damages liability simply because they could have operated in a marginally less restrictive manner is likely to chill beneficial business conduct.
A second brief, filed on behalf of “antitrust economists,” emphasizes that the NCAA has adapted the rules governing design of its product (college amateur sports) over time to meet consumer demand and to prevent colleges from pursuing their own interests (such as “pay to play”) in ways that would conflict with the overall procompetitive aims of the collaboration. While acknowledging that antitrust courts are free to scrutinize collaborations’ rules that go beyond the design of the product itself (such as the NCAA’s broadcast restrictions), the brief cites key Supreme Court decisions (NCAA v. Board of Regents and Texaco Inc. v.Dagher), for the proposition that courts should stay out of restrictions on the core activity of the joint venture itself. It then summarizes the policy justification for such judicial non-interference:
Permitting judges and juries to apply the Sherman Act to such decisions [regarding core joint venture activity] will inevitably create uncertainty that undermines innovation and investment incentives across any number of industries and collaborative ventures. In these circumstances, antitrust courts would be making public policy regarding the desirability of a product with particular features, as opposed to ferreting out agreements or unilateral conduct that restricts output, raises prices, or reduces innovation to the detriment of consumers.
In their brief opposing certiorari, counsel for Alston take the position that, in reality, the NCAA is seeking a special antitrust exemption for its competitively restrictive conduct—an issue that should be determined by Congress, not courts. Their brief notes that the concept of “amateurism” has changed over the years and that some increases in athletes’ compensation have been allowed over time. Thus, in the context of big-time college football and basketball:
[A]mateurism is little more than a pretext. It is certainly not a Sherman Act concept, much less a get-out-of-jail-free card that insulates any particular set of NCAA restraints from scrutiny.
Who Has the Better Case?
The NCAA’s position is a strong one. Association rules touching on compensation for college athletes are part of the core nature of the NCAA’s “amateur sports” product, as the Supreme Court stated (albeit in dictum) in Board of Regents. Furthermore, subsequent Supreme Court jurisprudence (see 2010’s American Needle Inc. v. NFL) has eschewed second-guessing of joint-venture product design decisions—which, in the case of the NCAA, involve formulating the restrictions (such as whether and how to compensate athletes) that are deemed key to defining amateurism.
The Alston amicus curiae briefs ably set forth the strong policy considerations that support this approach, centered on preserving incentives for the development of efficient welfare-generating joint ventures. Requiring joint venturers to provide “least restrictive means” justifications for design decisions discourages innovative activity and generates costly uncertainty for joint-venture planners, to the detriment of producers and consumers (who benefit from joint-venture innovations) alike. Claims by defendant Alston that the NCAA is in effect seeking to obtain a judicial antitrust exemption miss the mark; rather, the NCAA merely appears to be arguing that antitrust should be limited to evaluating restrictions that fall outside the scope of the association’s core mission. Significantly, as discussed in the NCAA’s brief petitioning for certiorari, other federal courts of appeals decisions in the 3rd, 5th, and 7th Circuits have treated NCAA bylaws going to the definition of amateurism in college sports as presumptively procompetitive and not subject to close scrutiny. Thus, based on the arguments set forth by litigants, a Supreme Court victory for the NCAA in Alston would appear sound as a matter of law and economics.
There may, however, be a catch. Some popular commentary has portrayed the NCAA as a malign organization that benefits affluent universities (and their well-compensated coaches) while allowing member colleges to exploit athletes by denying them fair pay—in effect, an institutional Mr. Hyde.
What’s more, consistent with the Mr. Hyde story, a number of major free-market economists (including, among others, Nobel laureate Gary Becker) have portrayed the NCAA as an anticompetitive monopsony employer cartel that has suppressed the labor market demand for student athletes, thereby limiting their wages, fringe benefits, and employment opportunities. (In a similar vein, the NCAA is seen as a monopolist seller cartel in the market for athletic events.) Consistent with this perspective, promoting the public good of amateurism (the Dr. Jekyll story) is merely a pretextual façade (a cover story, if you will) for welfare-inimical naked cartel conduct. If one buys this alternative story, all core product restrictions adopted by the NCAA should be fair game for close antitrust scrutiny—and thus, the 9th Circuit’s decision in Alston merits affirmation as a matter of antitrust policy.
There is, however, a persuasive response to the cartel story, set forth in Richard McKenzie and Dwight Lee’s essay “The NCAA: A Case Study of the Misuse of the Monopsony and Monopoly Models” (Chapter 8 of their 2008 book “In Defense of Monopoly: How Market Power Fosters Creative Production”). McKenzie and Lee examine the evidence bearing on economists’ monopsony cartel assertions (and, in particular, the evidence presented in a 1992 study by Arthur Fleischer, Brian Goff, and Richard Tollison) and find it wanting:
Our analysis leads inexorably to the conclusion that the conventional economic wisdom regarding the intent and consequences of NCAA restrictions is hardly as solid, on conceptual grounds, as the NCAA critics assert, often without citing relevant court cases. We have argued that the conventional wisdom is wrong in suggesting that, as a general proposition,
• college athletes are materially “underpaid” and are “exploited”;
• cheating on NCAA rules is prima facie evidence of a cartel intending to restrict employment and suppress athletes’ wages;
• barriers to entry ensure the continuance of the NCAA’s monopsony powers over athletes.
No such entry barriers (other than normal organizational costs, which need to be covered to meet any known efficiency test for new entrants) exist. In addition, the Supreme Court’s decision in NCAA indicates that the NCAA would be unable to prevent through the courts the emergence of competing athletic associations. The actual existence of other athletic associations indicates that entry would be not only possible but also practical if athletes’ wages were materially suppressed.
Conventional economic analysis of NCAA rules that we have challenged also is misleading in suggesting that collegiate sports would necessarily be improved if the NCAA were denied the authority to regulate the payment of athletes. Given the absence of legal barriers to entry into the athletic association market, it appears that if athletes’ wages were materially suppressed (or as grossly suppressed as the critics claim), alternative sports associations would form or expand, and the NCAA would be unable to maintain its presumed monopsony market position. The incentive for colleges and universities to break with the NCAA would be overwhelming.
From our interpretation of NCAA rules, it does not follow necessarily that athletes should not receive any more compensation than they do currently. Clearly, market conditions change, and NCAA rules often must be adjusted to accommodate those changes. In the absence of entry barriers, we can expect the NCAA to adjust, as it has adjusted, in a competitive manner its rules of play, recruitment, and retention of athletes. Our central point is that contrary to the proponents of the monopsony thesis, the collegiate athletic market is subject to the self-correcting mechanism of market pressures. We have reason to believe that the proposed extension of the antitrust enforcement to the NCAA rules or proposed changes in sports law explicitly or implicitly recommended by the proponents of the cartel thesis would be not only unnecessary but also counterproductive.
Although a closer examination of the McKenzie and Lee’s critique of the economists’ cartel story is beyond the scope of this comment, I find it compelling.
Conclusion
In sum, the claim that antitrust may properly be applied to combat the alleged “exploitation” of college athletes by NCAA compensation regulations does not stand up to scrutiny. The NCAA’s rules that define the scope of amateurism may be imperfect, but there is no reason to think that empowering federal judges to second guess and reformulate NCAA athletic compensation rules would yield a more socially beneficial (let alone optimal) outcome. (Believing that the federal judiciary can optimally reengineer core NCAA amateurism rules is a prime example of the Nirvana fallacy at work.) Furthermore, a Supreme Court decision affirming the 9th Circuit could do broad mischief by undermining case law that has accorded joint venturers substantial latitude to design the core features of their collective enterprise without judicial second-guessing. It is to be hoped that the Supreme Court will do the right thing and strongly reaffirm the NCAA’s authority to design and reformulate its core athletic amateurism product as it sees fit.
On July 1, the minimum wage will spike in several cities and states across the country. Portland, Oregon’s minimum wage will rise by $1.50 to $11.25 an hour. Los Angeles will also hike its minimum wage by $1.50 to $12 an hour. Recent research shows that these hikes will make low wage workers poorer.
A study supported and funded in part by the Seattle city government, was released this week, along with an NBER paper evaluating Seattle’s minimum wage increase to $13 an hour. The papers find that the increase to $13 an hour had significant negative impacts on employment and led to lower incomes for minimum wage workers.
The study is the first study of a very high minimum wage for a city. During the study period, Seattle’s minimum wage increased from what had been the nation’s highest state minimum wage to an even higher level. It is also unique in its use of administrative data that has much more detail than is usually available to economics researchers.
Conclusions from the research focusing on Seattle’s increase to $13 an hour are clear: The policy harms those it was designed to help.
A loss of more than 5,000 jobs and a 9 percent reduction in hours worked by those who retained their jobs.
Low-wage workers lost an average of $125 per month. The minimum wage has always been a terrible way to reduce poverty. In 2015 and 2016, I presented analysis to the Oregon Legislature indicating that incomes would decline with a steep increase in the minimum wage. The Seattle study provides evidence backing up that forecast.
Minimum wage supporters point to research from the 1990s that made headlines with its claims that minimum wage increases had no impact on restaurant employment. The authors of the Seattle study were able to replicate the results of these papers by using their own data and imposing the same limitations that the earlier researchers had faced. The Seattle study shows that those earlier papers’ findings were likely driven by their approach and data limitations. This is a big deal, and a novel research approach that gives strength to the Seattle study’s results.
Some inside baseball.
The Seattle Minimum Wage Study was supported and funded in part by the Seattle city government. It’s rare that policy makers go through any effort to measure the effectiveness of their policies, so Seattle should get some points for transparency.
Or not so transparent: The mayor of Seattle commissioned another study, by an advocacy group at Berkeley whose previous work on the minimum wage is uniformly in favor of hiking the minimum wage (they testified before the Oregon Legislature to cheerlead the state’s minimum wage increase). It should come as no surprise that the Berkeley group released its report several days before the city’s “official” study came out.
You might think to yourself, “OK, that’s Seattle. Seattle is different.”
But, maybe Seattle is not that different. In fact, maybe the negative impacts of high minimum wages are universal, as seen in another study that came out this week, this time from Denmark.
In Denmark the minimum wage jumps up by 40 percent when a worker turns 18. The Danish researchers found that this steep increase was associated with employment dropping by one-third, as seen in the chart below from the paper.
Let’s look at what’s going to happen in Oregon. The state’s employment department estimates that about 301,000 jobs will be affected by the rate increase. With employment of almost 1.8 million, that means one in six workers will be affected by the steep hikes going into effect on July 1. That’s a big piece of the work force. By way of comparison, in the past when the minimum wage would increase by five or ten cents a year, only about six percent of the workforce was affected.
This is going to disproportionately affect youth employment. As noted in my testimony to the legislature, unemployment for Oregonians age 16 to 19 is 8.5 percentage points higher than the national average. This was not always the case. In the early 1990s, Oregon’s youth had roughly the same rate of unemployment as the U.S. as a whole. Then, as Oregon’s minimum wage rose relative to the federal minimum wage, Oregon’s youth unemployment worsened. Just this week, Multnomah County made a desperate plea for businesses to hire more youth as summer interns.
It has been suggested Oregon youth have traded education for work experience—in essence, they have opted to stay in high school or enroll in higher education instead of entering the workforce. The figure below shows, however, that youth unemployment has increased for both those enrolled in school and those who are not enrolled in school. The figure debunks the notion that education and employment are substitutes. In fact, the large number of students seeking work demonstrates many youth want employment while they further their education.
None of these results should be surprising. Minimum wage research is more than a hundred years old. Aside from the “mans bites dog” research from the 1990s, economists were broadly in agreement that higher minimum wages would be associated with reduced employment, especially among youth. The research published this week is groundbreaking in its data and methodology. At the same time, the results are unsurprising to anyone with any understanding of economics or experience running a business.
George Mason University receives $30 million in gifts, renames School of Law after Justice Antonin Scalia
Largest combined gift in university’s history will support new scholarship programs
Arlington, VA— George Mason University today announces pledges totaling $30 million to the George Mason University Foundation to support the School of Law. The gifts, combined, are the largest in university history. The gifts will help establish three new scholarship programs that will potentially benefit hundreds of students seeking to study law at Mason.
In recognition of this historic gift, the Board of Visitors has approved the renaming of the school to The Antonin Scalia School of Law at George Mason University.
“This is a milestone moment for the university,” said George Mason University President Ángel Cabrera. “These gifts will create opportunities to attract and retain the best and brightest students, deliver on our mission of inclusive excellence, and continue our goal to make Mason one of the preeminent law schools in the country.”
Mason has grown rapidly over the last four decades to become the largest public research university in Virginia. The School of Law was established in 1979 and has been continually ranked among the top 50 law programs in the nation by U.S. News and World Report.
Justice Scalia, who served 30 years on the U.S. Supreme Court, spoke at the dedication of the law school building in 1999 and was a guest lecturer at the university. He was a resident of nearby McLean, Virginia.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, his esteemed colleague on the Supreme Court for more than two decades, said Scalia’s opinions challenged her thinking and that naming the law school after him was a fine tribute.
“Justice Scalia was a law teacher, public servant, legal commentator, and jurist nonpareil. As a colleague who held him in highest esteem and great affection, I miss his bright company and the stimulus he provided, his opinions ever challenging me to meet his best efforts with my own. It is a tribute altogether fitting that George Mason University’s law school will bear his name. May the funds for scholarships, faculty growth, and curricular development aid the Antonin Scalia School of Law to achieve the excellence characteristic of Justice Scalia, grand master in life and law,” added Ginsburg.
“Justice Scalia’s name evokes the very strengths of our school: civil liberties, law and economics, and constitutional law,” said Law School Dean Henry N. Butler. “His career embodies our law school’s motto of learn, challenge, lead. As a professor and jurist, he challenged those around him to be rigorous, intellectually honest, and consistent in their arguments.”
The combined gift will allow the university to establish three new scholarship programs to be awarded exclusively and independently by the university:
Antonin Scalia Scholarship –Awarded to students with excellent academic credentials.
A. Linwood Holton, Jr. Leadership Scholarship – Named in honor of the former governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia, this scholarship will be awarded to students who have overcome barriers to academic success, demonstrated outstanding leadership qualities, or have helped others overcome discrimination in any facet of life.
F.A. Hayek Law, Legislation, and Liberty Scholarship – Named in honor of the 1974 Nobel Prize winner in economics, this scholarship will be awarded to students who have a demonstrated interest in studying the application of economic principles to the law.
“The growth of George Mason University’s law school, both in size and influence, is a tribute to the hard work of its leaders and faculty members,” said Governor Terry McAuliffe. “I am particularly pleased that new scholarship awards for students who face steep barriers in their academic pursuits will be named in honor of former Virginia Governor Linwood Holton, an enduring and appropriate legacy for a man who championed access to education for all Virginians.”
The scholarships will help Mason continue to be one of the most diverse universities in America.
“When we speak about diversity, that includes diversity of thought and exposing ourselves to a range of ideas and points of view,” said Cabrera. “Justice Scalia was an advocate of vigorous debate and enjoyed thoughtful conversations with those he disagreed with, as shown by his longtime friendship with Justice Ginsburg. That ability to listen and engage with others, despite having contrasting opinions or perspectives, is what higher education is all about.”
The gift includes $20 million that came to George Mason through a donor who approached Leonard A. Leo of the Federalist Society, a personal friend of the late Justice Scalia and his family. The anonymous donor asked that the university name the law school in honor of the Justice. “The Scalia family is pleased to see George Mason name its law school after the Justice, helping to memorialize his commitment to a legal education that is grounded in academic freedom and a recognition of the practice of law as an honorable and intellectually rigorous craft,” said Leo.
The gift also includes a $10 million grant from the Charles Koch Foundation, which supports hundreds of colleges and universities across the country that pursue scholarship related to societal well-being and free societies.
“We’re excited to support President Cabrera and Dean Butler’s vision for the Law School as they welcome new students and continue to distinguish Mason as a world-class research university,” said Charles Koch Foundation President Brian Hooks.
The name change is pending approval from the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia.
A formal dedication ceremony will occur in the fall.
About George Mason
George Mason University is Virginia’s largest public research university. Located near Washington, D.C., Mason enrolls more than 33,000 students from 130 countries and all 50 states. Mason has grown rapidly over the past half-century and is recognized for its innovation and entrepreneurship, remarkable diversity, and commitment to accessibility.
About the Mason School of Law
The George Mason University School of Law is defined by three words: Learn. Challenge. Lead. The goal is to have students who will receive an outstanding legal education (Learn), be taught to critically evaluate prevailing orthodoxy and pursue new ideas (Challenge), and, ultimately, be well prepared to distinguish themselves in their chosen fields (Lead).
About Faster Farther—The Campaign for George Mason University
Faster Farther is about securing Mason’s place as the intellectual cornerstone of our region and a global leader in higher education. We have a goal to raise $500 million through 2018.
This does not necessarily mean, however, that all restrictions the NCAA places on student athletes run afoul of the antitrust laws. As the Supreme Court made clear in the 1984 NCAA case, the federal antitrust laws apply to the NCAA, but competitive restraints may pass muster if they are justifiable means of fostering competition among amateur athletic teams, such as uniform rules defining the conditions of a sports contest, the eligibility of participants, or the sharing of responsibilities and benefits integral to the NCAA’s joint venture.
Like the anticompetitive restrictions on member colleges’ separate television contracts struck down by the Supreme Court in NCAA, however, the NCAA’s profiting from student athletes’ rights of publicity is not vital to the preservation of balanced collegiate amateur competition. Likewise, it is not needed to avoid the payment of student salaries that some might argue smacks of disfavored “professionalism” (although others would argue it promotes healthy competition and avoids exploitation of athletes). In contrast, a policy of vindicating athletes’ right of publicity enables them to capture the value of the intellectual property generated by their accomplishments, and thus incentivizes outstanding athletic achievements, consistent with the legitimate ends of NCAA competitions. Proof of a concerted effort by the NCAA to deny this benefit to student athletes and instead to share the IP-generated proceeds only with member institutions would, if shown, appear to lack any cognizable efficiency justification, and thus be ripe for antitrust condemnation.
Whatever the outcome of the current rights of publicity litigation, the NCAA may expect to face antitrust scrutiny on a number of fronts. This is as it should be. While the organization clearly yields efficiencies that benefit consumers (such as establishing and overseeing rules and standards for many collegiate sports), its inherent temptation to act as a classic cartel for the financial benefit of its members will not disappear. Indeed, its incentive to seek monopoly profits may rise, as the money generated by organized athletics and related entertainment offshoots continues to grow. Accordingly, antitrust enforcers should remain vigilant, and efforts to obtain NCAA-specific statutory antitrust exemptions, even if well-meaning, should be resisted.
Paul Fain has an interesting update today on the issue of two-tier pricing for California’s community college system. Santa Monica College rocked the boat in March when it announced plans to start using a two-tier pricing schedule that would charge higher tuition rates for high-demand courses.
Santa Monica–and most all community colleges in California apparently–have been slammed with would-be students looking to take classes that would help prepare them for better jobs or for further education and training (that would prepare them for better jobs). The problem is that state funding for community colleges has been drastically reduced, thereby limiting the number of course offerings schools can offer at the subsidized tuition rate of $36 per credit hour. Santa Monica had the radical idea (well, radical for anyone that fails to understand economics, perhaps) of offering additional sections of high-demand courses, but at full-cost tuition rates (closer to $200 per credit hour).
Students protested. Faculty at other community colleges complained. Santa Monica College relented. So students don’t have to worry about paying more for courses they will not be able to take and faculty at other colleges don’t have to worry about the possibility of more students wanting to go to their schools because the overflow tuition at Santa Monica drives students to find substitutes. Well, that, and no more worries for those faculty at schools who charge even more than $200 for students to get those core courses that they cannot get into at their community college. It didn’t matter much anyhow, since most agreed that Santa Monica College’s proposal would have violated the law.
Now there is a proposal before the California legislature that would allow schools to implement two-tier pricing, but only for technical trade courses, not for high-demand general education-type courses.
Aside from complaints that “the state should be giving away education–even if they are not” (which are the most inane because they have nothing to do with the issue at hand), there are a few other arguments or positions offered that just cause one to scratch one’s head in wonder:
1) Fain reports that Michelle Pilati, president of the Academic Senate of California Community Colleges, asserted that “two-tiered tuition is unfair to lower-income students because it would open up classes to students who have the means to pay much more.” Apparently, Ms. Pilati would prefer all students have equal access to no education than to open up more spaces (to lower-income students) by opening up more spaces to higher-income students at higher prices. Gotcha.
2) The Board of Trustees at San Diego Community College seems to agree, having passed a resolution opposing the proposed legislation because it “would limit or exclude student access based solely on cost, causing inequities in the treatment of students”. Apparently the inequity of some students getting an education and some not is more noble because explicit out-of-pocket costs are not involved and other forms of rationing are used. And yet…
3) According to Fain, Nancy Shulock, director of the Institute for Higher Education Leadership and Policy at California State University at Sacramento, asserts “wealthier students have a leg up when registering for courses. She said research has found that higher-income students generally have more ‘college knowledge’ that helps them navigate often-complex registration processes. That means wealthier students could more quickly snag spots in classes, getting the normal price, while their lower-income peers would be more likely to pay the higher rates under a two-tiered system.”
So, community colleges have created overly complex registration systems that disadvantage lower-income students. Yet, all that suggests is that the current system already punishes lower-income students because wealthier students can more easily “snag” the limited number of subsidized sections. Perhaps community colleges could make their enrollment processes less complex?
Regardless the fate of the “two-tier pricing” legislation, there is already a two-tier system in place; only the current two-tier plan prevents people from getting educations at any price.
I find it interesting that many on the left, so intent on maintaining their anti-market narratives, distort reality so badly that black is white and up is down–and “government” is “corporations.”
I’ve highlighted this before when discussing the misdirected criticisms (and solutions) of self-described privacy advocates who point the finger at Google when really they should be concerned about the government.
Now comes Brian Leiter referring us to an article on “Corporate Attacks on Law School Clinics.” That’s the title of his post which contains nothing more than a heated admonition to read a linked article, so the title says it all: Corporations are attacking law school clinics (and this is a huge problem that should concern everyone). And I have no doubt many corporations are upset with many law school clinics. But what’s so fascinating is how, when you click through to the article, you discover that the actual attacks on law school clinics are, in every single example adduced in the story, actually emanating from governments. It’s pretty amazing. Here are the relevant snippets from each example in the article, but I recommend reading the whole thing:
In spring 2010, a law-clinic lawsuit against a $4 billion poultry company triggered a legislative effort to withhold state funds from the University of Maryland unless its law school provided the legislature with sensitive information about clinic clients and case activities.
The attack plan included the introduction of legislation that would forfeit all state funding if a university offered certain types of law-clinic courses.
The first occurred in 1968 at the University of Mississippi, where the appointments of two untenured professors were terminated following complaints that their new clinical program participated in a desegregation lawsuit.
In efforts to terminate the program, clinic opponents sponsored a bill in the legislature to withdraw state funding for the entire law school.
In 1993, then-governor Edwin Edwards was so upset at statements the clinic’s director made that the governor threatened to deny financial assistance to state residents attending the university and to prohibit Tulane medical students from working in any state hospital unless the director was fired.
A few years later, the clinic’s success in representing a low-income, minority community opposed to a proposed chemical plant led then-governor Mike Foster and business interests to threaten to revoke Tulane’s tax-exempt status and deny it access to state education trust-fund money, to organize an economic boycott of Tulane, and to refuse to hire its graduates.
When the university still refused to terminate the course, clinic opponents successfully persuaded the Louisiana Supreme Court to impose restrictions on whom law school clinics can assist and what kinds of representation students can provide.
When state legislators expressed disapproval of a law school clinic’s representation of citizens concerned about a proposed highway, university officials began charging the clinic for the university’s overhead costs, prevented it from approaching funders unless it agreed to avoid certain cases that might upset legislators, and pressed it to separate from the school and move off campus.
The clinical program at Rutgers University is defending itself against a lawsuit brought by a developer, who was defeated in a clinic case and is now seeking to use the state’s public records law to gain access to internal clinic case files that would otherwise be beyond the reach of a party to a lawsuit
A dispute in Michigan this past winter demonstrates that attacks also can occur when students get in the way of powerful government interests. The district attorney in Detroit, upset with the efforts of a University of Michigan innocence clinic to exonerate a man it alleged was wrongfully imprisoned for ten years, sought to force the students to testify at trial against their client, an unprecedented effort to interfere in the students’ attorneyclient relationship.
Perdue persuaded legislators to attach a rider to the university’s appropriations that conditioned $750,000 in funding on submission of a report detailing clinic cases, clients, expenditures, and funding, much of which is confidential information.
An even harsher attack occurred in Louisiana this past spring, where the Louisiana Chemical Association (LCA) pushed for legislation, subject to narrow exceptions, that would forfeit all state funds going to any university, public or private, whose clinics brought or defended a lawsuit against a government agency, represented anyone seeking monetary damages, or raised state constitutional claims. The bill also would have made clinic courses at the state’s four law schools subject to oversight by legislative commerce committees.
This isn’t cherry-picking. Unless I made a mistake, this is every single example of “attacks on law school clinics” in the article. And every single one involves government actions or the threat of government actions. Wow. How on earth could anyone read this article and feel comfortable calling this a problem of corporations? Don’t get me wrong–I understand that there are often corporate interests behind these actions, spurring them on. But to call this a “corporate” problem rather than a “government” problem–with the implicit call for government to do something about the problem–is to fail so utterly to understand the problems of government power that it boggles the mind.
Like Brian Leiter, I find this list troubling. I am appalled at how much inappropriate government interference this represents. But it is simply delusional to call this a problem of corporations. You want to fix the problem? Rein in the ability of governments to interfere to thoroughly with private life that special interests don’t have access to such a powerful and, often, invincible bludgeon.
Tom Smith offers an entertaining and insightful perspective on the economics of higher education:
Without passing moral judgment in any way, I will just observe it is astonishing that higher education in this country has managed to get established a system where consumers have to disclose in detail how much money they have before they are told what they must pay. I mean Ralph’s has to establish a Price Club and airlines First Class and Coach and so on, but Yale and the University of the Ozarks just have you tell them in detail every last thing about your finances and precisely how desirable your offspring is. Amazing. And then they squeeze really, really hard. The producer surplus they are extracting must be simply massive. Of course, I am paid out of this surplus, so I can’t complain too much. But it has got to be just hugely inefficient. And, just to make it perfect, it all gets justified as redistribution to help that most worthy of souls, the very smart but very poor kid from Hellovanotion, Nevada, who works 40 hours a week delousing donkeys and caring for his quadriplegic mother, while still getting 1600 SATs, a 4.6 and captaining his/her wind ensemble to international glory. And is President of Key Club. And yet, how much of the surplus extracted actually goes to put the poor, deserving kid through Duke? I tend to think, probably not that much, percentage-wise. Maybe about as much as my income taxes go to support the hard working but poor single mom who just needs a little help so she can get that community college degree and never be on welfare again. So big emotional but relatively small statistical impact. Just expressin’ a natural curiosity here. Anyway, check out the book.
Victor Fleischer and Phil Weiser are putting on a Law and New Institutional Economics workshop for law professors in June. The conference announcement is here. I believe Thom attended last year’s installment, and I will be on the program this year. Here are more details:
New Institutional Economics (NIE) is an interdisciplinary methodology that draws on economics, law, organization theory, political science, history, and sociology. It focuses on the study of political, legal, and social institutions and how those institutions shape the behavior of organizations, firms, or individuals. These institutions establish the “rules of the game” – the set of formal and informal laws, rules, and norms of social behavior that shape economic development and growth, innovation, social organizations, and political stability. NIE’s most often-cited proponents are Ronald Coase, Oliver Williamson, and Douglass North.
Workshop topics. The workshop is primarily intended for law professors, and it will include scholarly presentations both by workshop faculty and by several workshop participants. The primary focus is on (1) research that helps us understand the effects of laws and legal institutions on economic development, innovation, and social and political institutions, and (2) legal scholarship that draws on analysis of institutional context and institutional design (rather than, say, legal doctrinal analysis, or economic or social theory standing alone). Substantive legal areas may range widely, but may include such topics as business law and capital markets, trade and antitrust regulation, intellectual property, telecommunications, higher education policy, the legal profession, and tax policy.
Last summer, the University of Colorado Law School hosted a one-day workshop designed to introduce legal scholars from around the country to the basic foundations of New Institutional Economics. This year, we hope to build on last year’s program by revisiting some of the key ideas and enjoying the opportunity to hear from some leading scholars who study institutions. In addition, this year’s program will include several presentations of recent scholarship and works-in-progress from conference participants, with our expert “workshop faculty” serving as discussants. If you are interested in presenting recently published work or a work-in-progress, please notify Victor Fleischer at victor.fleischer@gmail.com.
The workshop will be held at the University of Colorado Law School, in Boulder. We will provide meals, but participants will be expected to cover their own transportation and lodging expenses. The workshop will begin at 9:00 am on Thursday, June 4, 2009, and will conclude after lunch on Friday, June 5, 2009.
Steve Levitt thinks that tenure is overrated. But relative to what? Levitt proposes doing away with tenure because it distorts the incentives of scholars to front load their productivity and then ride off into the sunset after tenure is granted. Surely he is right about this incentive effect. Levitt also makes quick work of the frequently raised defense that tenure is necessary to protect those doing politically unpopular work and adds that:
If the U of C told me that they were going to revoke my tenure, but add $15,000 to my salary, I would be happy to take that trade. I’m sure many others would as well. By dumping one unproductive, previously tenured faculty member, the University could compensate ten others with the savings.
It must not be that simple because few schools have tried, and my sense is that those that took a stab at it capitulated quickly and reinstated tenure. What am I missing?
Levitt’s post provoked a response from Greg Mankiw suggesting that the piece Levitt is missing is faith in markets:
My guess is that a more typical faculty member would place a larger monetary value on having tenure. If so, universities may well be better off by paying lower salaries to tenured faculty, despite the adverse incentive effects, than paying higher salaries to professors without tenure. In other words, Steve thinks the competitive market for professors is resulting in inefficient contracts, while I believe that, absent any reason for market failure, the labor contracts we observe are likely to be efficient. (We Harvard profs always have to remind those Chicago guys that competitive markets work pretty well.)
The last paranthetical line is pretty funny. But it is true that there is some tension in Levitt’s claim that we should believe in competitive labor markets to protect those fired for political reasons but not to produce efficient labor contracts in the first instance. Perhaps he has something in mind to reconcile these claims, but color me skeptical for the moment. While I don’t pretend to know the precise form of the optimal labor market contract in higher education, markets have a remarkable history of producing efficient contractual forms and institutions that economize on these complex and dynamic costs. The persistence of these contractual forms is probably a fairly good sign that it is efficient.
However, the enormous complexity of the tradeoffs involved in altering the dynamic incentives of scholars within a department would appear to cut both ways. And probably across institutions as well. For example, a second tier school whose hiring strategy involves a greater reliance on “gambling” on young scholars and weeding out those that underperform at the tenure stage might face vastly different incentives than a top 10 law school facing very different constraints. One can also imagine other dimensions on which the tenure considerations and optimal “lifecycle” productivity incentives for scholars might vary across departments and universities. With all this variation between and within universities why the near universal adoption of tenure despite the obvious incentive costs that Levitt identifies?
Perhaps the attacks on the tenure are a good example of the nirvana fallacy. The tenure system is not perfect. But while it distorts incentives, perhaps these effects are dominated by the costs of the alternative governance institutions and contractual forms? But are these alternative forms really that bad?
The most likely alternative candidates are delegation of more power to the Dean or other senior faculty members. Mankiw describes some of the problems with the former and Dan Solove over at Coop explores some issues with the “firing by faculty” model. But the inefficiences cannot just be a few bad decisions made for political reasons. As Levitt suggests, the market will protect those productive professors who are fired for political reasons. There are examples abound that suggest he is right. But maybe something larger is at stake. Perhaps the increased divisiveness and resources devoted to these sorts of decisions by the faculty at reduces productivity. But are those effects so large as to swamp the beneficial incentive effects of doing away with the tenure system? It is hard for me to believe this. Mostly because GMU is a place that is very conducive to and rewarding of productivity. It is tough for me to imagine a set of political issues that would actually reduce my own productivity (lots of other things: blogging, March Madness, poker … but not faculty politics). But I’ve also only been a faculty member for a few years and perhaps I am too green to understand how ugly things can get in other places.
All of this leads me to more questions than answers. Does the tenure model really reduce faculty divisiveness relative to alternatives? Does this argument imply that faculty collegiality (or at least, lack of divisiveness) really has productivity effects? Should untenured faculty members blog about tenure and effects on productivity instead of writing? Is my Dean reading this? Gotta go.
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